Solenis Recognizes BASF’s White Stone Facility for a Boiler Water Optimization Program That Reduced Water Usage, Fuel Consumption and Carbon Emissions

WILMINGTON, Del. (USA) – Solenis LLC, a leading global producer of specialty chemicals, is proud to announce that a BASF site located in White Stone, South Carolina, is among the winners of a 2023 Solenis Sustainability Award. The White Stone operation, which produces surfactants for the personal care and cleaning industries, is being recognized for a boiler tuning effort that led to annual savings of $27,002 (makeup water savings of $3,911; wastewater savings of $7,821; and fuel savings of $15,270).

The BASF White Stone facility is a typical batch process chemical plant that uses steam from its three boilers in several critical processes. The boilers started experiencing carryover problems, which occurs when solids and other contaminants leave the boilers with the steam. Solids carried in the steam can form deposits in non-return and other control valves, affecting system efficiency. The escaping solids can also enter process streams, leading to product quality issues. As the carryover problem worsened, the White Stone facility was unable to sustain good boiler cycles.

Solenis team members worked closely with the White Stone maintenance staff to resolve the issue. This involved weekly interventions to diagnose likely causes, implement system tweaks, and analyze the results. According to Bill Crawford, the Solenis sales representative, it took longer than planned but the results have been positive. “There was little helpful data to view because the plant did not have a steam mass flow meter to capture critical metrics on their distributed control system for analysis,” he noted. “That left us no choice but to iterate various strategies to tune the boilers and test the effects.”

Ultimately, the joint Solenis-BASF team focused on two of the site’s three boilers — the 400 and 800 horsepower (HP) units. The decision was made to focus on the firing controls, which alter the level of the burners to regulate combustion and maintain a specific working pressure based on steam demand. The team also replaced several header traps to help equalize pressure drops and minimize carryover. When these changes were made, the boilers stabilized considerably, allowing the team to make incremental adjustments to optimize the boiler’s conductivity and maximize the number of cycles.

The results were noteworthy. Average boiler cycles increased from 15 to 25 and water usage decreased by 2.48 gallons per minute. At the same time, fuel consumption also decreased by 3,817,438 cubic feet per year. This translated into total savings of $27,002 — $11,732 from water savings and $15,270 from fuel savings. The reduced fuel consumption also lowered the site’s carbon output, amounting to 6,156 US tons per year.

“The numbers on this project were not astoundingly large,” Crawford admitted, “but the results reveal the importance of continuous improvement — of making small, incremental changes that add up to a larger success. When you multiply these kinds of improvements across multiple BASF sites, the impact can be dramatic.”

Gerald Murphy, the Site Director at the White Stone site, agreed. “The sustainability strategy at BASF is built on a foundation of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. Our company has already achieved a considerable reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by optimizing energy generation and production processes. Continuous improvements like those achieved by collaborating with Solenis at White Stone will keep us on the path to climate neutrality.”

Solenis established the Sustainability Awards in 2020 to recognize projects that deliver reduced water use, reduced energy consumption, decreased greenhouse gas emissions, optimized raw material utilization or reduced waste. Read more about the awards and winning projects on Solenis.com.